


Growth and Evolution, A Star Without a Home

by FireEye



Category: Star Ocean: The Second Story | Second Evolution
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 06:48:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18773425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireEye/pseuds/FireEye
Summary: Noel is in a low mood.  Chisato is...Chisato.  And, as Ashton finds, space isn't so very big at all.





	Growth and Evolution, A Star Without a Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Exile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Exile/gifts).



Ashton had worn the lacquer off his charm.  Granted, he’d been over halfway there already, but the planetrise from Expel’s moon and their setting adrift into the sea of stars had put him in a pensive mood.

A stressful intake through a Terran Alliance security checkpoint, where Noel had jumped in to cover for his ignorance, hadn’t much helped.  Nor had the crowds – a wide variety of people all from different planets and cultures, all going about their daily business.

As they made their way through the spaceport, however, neither the colorful menagerie of aliens nor any of the Terran security forces seemed to notice he was there.  Dragons and all.  It was... _strange_ , to say the least, to find a crowd he managed blend in to.

All the same, Noel’s strange mood hadn’t improved.  The crush of so many people might have had something to do with it, but Ashton couldn’t help the heavy, sinking sensation that he’d done something wrong.

Noel’s pace slowed as he regarded their surroundings, and Ashton finally gathered up the courage to ask.

“Why did you tell that man what you did?” he elaborated, more out of nervousness than any belief that Noel might have forgotten so easily, “That... story about how we were conducting research and I was your assistant?”

“Because you’re not supposed to be here,” Noel replied.  “If he had looked up Expel and managed to find it on a map, he would have had you detained and neither one of us would have been allowed to go back.”

“Wha-?”  Ashton’s mouth hung open for a long moment.  Once he’d found it again, his voice raised, “ _Why_?”

“Because by their standards, you’re too primitive to know that all of this exists.”

“...oh.”

Ashton’s expression fell.  He tried to stifle it, to no avail – the dragons always gave him away.  Noel saw it, sighed, and rubbed his hand over his face.

“Ashton, I’m more than glad to have you along.  Believe me,” Noel assured him, “And from where I’m standing, _primitive_ is hypocritical coming from the likes of them.”

They had slowed to a standstill, and the crowd parted around them.

“ _Noel_!”

The familiar voice cut through all else.  Noel turned, and Ashton sought to glance around him.  Waving at them from a distance, smiling brightly, was an equally familiar face.

Then she was running towards them.

Standing fast, Noel raised his hands.  Chisato’s inertia pushed against his as she grabbed for them, interlocking her fingers with his in greeting.  Her smile was cheery – with nothing of the doubt and grief that could take him in the dark of night, or the mood that had gripped him since their arrival – and Noel smiled faintly in return.  They held together for several moments longer – the long forgotten children of a dead civilization.

“I’m so glad you made it,” she was saying.  “I thought you might have changed your mind...”

Dropping his hands, she peered around Noel’s shoulder to find Ashton standing in his shadow.  Chisato smiled at him.

“Ashton,” she acknowledged.  “Tell me, how are you finding space?”

“It’s...” Ashton struggled with the concept, “Big.”

“Eloquent, as always.”

“ _Very_ big.”

Chisato’s smile deepened, and Ashton felt a blush rush to his cheeks.  She linked arms with Noel, turning her attention to him again as she launched into a tale of _recent events_ in the spaceport.

While they started off, Chisato leading the way through the promenade, Ashton felt the dragons pulling his attention behind him and upward.  From an upper walkway, a man was watching him; when Ashton met his eyes, he smiled, and nodded genially.

It seemed, then, Ashton wasn’t invisible to _everyone_.

“ _Ashton_!”

His head whipped around towards the sound of his name, and he found he’d fallen behind.  Chisato was waving at him; and Noel had turned to look back.

Hurrying to catch up, Ashton cast one wandering glance at the upper level.  The man was gone.

***

“I guess I expected it to be more like... I don’t know.  _Sailing_.”

The confined apartment Chisato had set up in had a sparseness to it.  Everything in space had a sparseness to it.  Everything was so _clean_ and _sleek_ and _utilitarian_.

They had gotten on the topic of space again, as Ashton flipped the wooden charm between a finger and a thumb, inattentively.  It was carved from a branch.  One that had grown on a tree.  A tree that had grown in the ground, _on a planet_.  And not just _any_ planet, the planet he was _born_ on.

Ashton had more of a connection to that tree than anything on board this station.

“That’s so cute,” Chisato told him.  “ _Quaint_ , but cute.”

The food she placed in front of him looked like food, at least.  Although the dragons crowded him out before he could actually taste it to be sure, and Gyoro stole his spoon.

“You’re not eating?” he asked.

Chisato shrugged, offering him an easy smile.  “I’m not hungry.”

Her fingers brushed his arm, and Ashton half-turned to watch as she made her way down the steps from the small kitchen to her workspace.  There was a twinge in his chest as she leaned into the desk, leaning over Noel’s shoulder for a sparse handful of words over... whatever it was he was looking into on her workstation.

Whatever the feeling was, it evaporated into mild exasperation at the whining and growling overhead as Ururun started fussing with Gyoro over the stolen spoon.

***

“You didn’t come all this way to be gloomy, did you?”

It was all the warning Noel had before Chisato’s palms fell lightly on his shoulders.  They slid down his back, and her arm pressed against his elbow as she circled around him.

By the expression on her face, she might have been concerned.  But her eyes were sharp, and scrying, and hiding things from her only ever made her more curious and determined anyway.

“I’ve been thinking a lot, lately,” he admitted, avoiding her gaze.  “About the past.”

“Yeah?”

“...yeah.” Noel sighed.  “About the past, about the future... about everything that could have been done differently.”

Chisato’s smile was wry, and held a hint of sadness, but it was genuine.  Her fingers slid up again – following the plane of his chest towards his neck.

“While we’re together, Nede still exists,” she reminded him.  “That’s why you came, isn’t it?”

 

Ashton lifted his head from the couch armrest; he hadn’t been sleeping... not _exactly_ , but it had taken the dragons squirming and fidgeting to pull him out of it.  He blinked, and stilled.  His own heartbeat thrummed too loudly in his ears as blood rushed to his face, and his breathing slowed.

He shot a careful glance towards the door, and back again, only to find Chisato staring at him.  Noel was sensibly oblivious with his face tucked against her neck, but her mouth curved into a deeper smile at Ashton’s wide-eyed attention.  She inclined her head in an open question.

Biting his lip, Ashton glanced once more at the door and back in meaning; he shook his head, politely declining the invitation.  Chisato shrugged, returning her full attention to Noel.

Quietly, Ashton made a break for it.

***

The station outside of Chisato’s door was a maze of monochromatic steel walkways and holographic colors.

Ashton got turned around almost immediately, and once he found what he thought was the right way, he found himself trapped in an elevator.  Finally, he happened upon a woman with bright, icy blue hair.

It didn’t give him any better idea of where he was going, but following her through the crowd gave him a direction to go in.

For a little while, at least.

***

They’d made it as far as the couch – all soft touches and wordless, gentle sensation – before Chisato’s curiosity got the better of her.  The way Noel kept drifting off, their visit evidently had nothing to do with a change of scenery.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” she murmured, her mouth below his ear, “What’s really bothering you?”

Noel squirmed under her.  He raised one hand to brush his fingers though her hair, then dropped it again.

“The Terrans keep half the galaxy in the dark ages while they’re hardly out of the dark ages themselves.”

“So?”

“We could uplift them all.”

Chisato’s eyebrows raised.  “I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure I remember enough of my primary engineering for that.”

“ _We_ could,” Noel insisted.  “Our people were civilized across the galaxy before Earth even formed.  We know all the ways we went _wrong_ -...”

“And what would we do with them if we did?”

Noel didn’t answer.  He sank back into the couch.  Deeper, even.

“This is home now,” she reminded him.  Her fingers rested lightly against base of his throat.  “Right here.”

She felt the muscles move under her fingertips as he swallowed.  Her eyes fluttered shut; she sighed, then opened them again.

“Why’d you come, Noel?”  Chisato asked, point blank.  “To talk me into creating another Nede?”

“Why’d I...?”  Noel stared at her, his hand sliding up over her hip.  “You sent me a message, asking me to...”

“What?”  She squinted at him, a hint of uneasy laughter in her words.  “No, no, no – you sent me one, first.”  Her voice grew small with uncertainty, and she asked, “Didn’t you?”

His hand caught the small of her back at he sat up, or she might’ve fallen off his lap from how swiftly he bolted upright.

“Show me.”

Chisato shrugged.  She pushed herself to her feet, and ran her fingers through her hair, ruffling it further as she padded across the room to her workstation.  Noel hovered over her shoulder as her fingers flew over the input to call up her personal messages, and she played back the one in question.

It looked like Noel.  It sounded like Noel.  And as the man on the screen spoke, Chisato studied Noel’s face, gauging his reaction.  The message didn’t even play to the end before he was casting about the apartment.

She didn’t even have to ask, but she did.  “You didn’t send that?”

“Where’s Ashton?”

Chisato blinked.  She stood straighter, the awareness seeping in slowly that Ashton had crept out earlier.  Noel went as far as to poke his head into her bedroom in a vain hope, before making for the door himself.

“Stay here.”

“Excuse me?” Chisato stared after him, then shook her head.  “Like _hell_!”

***

“Something wrong with the water?”

“What?  ...no!” Ashton blurted out.  Everyone was so busy minding their own business, he hadn’t expected anyone here to try to _talk_ to him.  “No, it’s just...”

The barrel was _clear_.  You could see _right through it_.

“Different from where you come from?”

The man was smiling.  The dragons hissed between one another above his head, writhing back and forth, and Ashton realized it was the very same man who’d been watching them when he and Noel had first arrived at the station.

“Is it that obvious?” he asked, “That I’m...”

“That you’re... a little out of your element, shall we say?”

“I’m not one to discriminate.  It’s not in my nature.”  The man inclined his head towards the tables set up on the veranda.  “Care to join me?”

There was something peculiar about him.  Something that Ashton couldn’t quite place.  His gold eyes were bright with intelligence, set into a face with pleasant symmetry.  His entire aura carried with it a kind of enigmatic detachment.  But it was his ears that caught Ashton’s attention.  They were short, not entirely unlike those of an Expellian or Terran – if Claude was anything to go by – except that they ended at an abrupt angle, leaving them almost jaggedly square.

Ashton was still puzzling it over as he followed the man’s lead, seating himself at the table.

Then the answer hit him, and he sucked in a breath.  “You’re-...?”

Before he could finish his question, the man asked instead, “How does it feel?”

“...what?”

“All this,” he elaborated, with a twist of his fingers at their surroundings.  “You saved the universe.  You saved all of these _meaningful_ lives surrounding you, and yet...  They haven’t the slightest idea of who you are, or how close they came to total annihilation.”

“You’re from Nede, aren’t you?”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Ashton swallowed.  “I... I hadn’t thought about it.”

“And now that you have?”

“I don’t know.”

“Living with the truth is its own burden, isn’t it?”

“I was right, wasn’t I?  You... you are from Nede?”

The man’s eyes narrowed, but he only seemed amused.  “Has Noel never mentioned me, then?”

Ashton shook his head, and the man sighed.  “How like him.”

“He doesn’t talk about his past, much.”

“We were friends once.  Good friends, if you’ll believe it.  We... lived in the same world.  We believed in many of the same truths.”

The stranger sat up straighter.  As he and Ashton spoke, an entourage of Terrans in matching uniforms were shoving their way through the crowd towards the restaurant veranda.

“Are they after you?”

“No.”  The man’s smile didn’t waver.  “It isn’t me that they’re after.”

Ashton shot another glance at the Terran soldiers.  The man seemed rather confident, seeing as they were certainly headed this way in a hurr-...

 _Oh_.

They were after _him_.

“Stop right there!”

When Ashton looked again, the man was gone.  Belatedly on the heels of _that_ realization, he realized he probably ought to run, himself.

***

“Chisato, _please_ -...”

“There,” she said,

Chisato stopped walking, but not on his account.  Leaning against the railing, she threw her hand out to point at the commotion on the other side of the central platform.

Down the gallery a floor, straight across.  Bounding off their level to slide down and land on the next, she took off running.

A hand grabbed his shoulder, stopping Noel before he could find a way down follow her.  He gripped the railing tight, and closed his eyes – he didn’t have to hear the voice to know, in his mind’s eye, who it was that stood behind him.

“Noel.”

“Did you forget your purpose?”

“Did you forget us?”

Noel didn’t answer.  From where they stood, he could see Chisato taking the direct, gymnastic approach across the central square.  She caught up with Ashton, wasting no time in helping him straight up and over the next railing to lead him away from the pursuit.

“We need to talk, wouldn’t you agree?”

The man flicked his fingers.

 

The thin strap around Ashton’s wrist snapped.

He skid to a stop, spinning back around in time to see his bracelet tumble off the walkway.

Chisato called after him, but he was already on his way to leap over the railing after it.

The next level down, Ashton retrieved his charm from where he had fallen.

And straightening, he froze, holding it to his chest.

He was surrounded.

Chisato landed heavily beside him.  He shoved her behind him, for all that he was practically unarmed – dragons notwithstanding – and she was more than capable.  Chisato grabbed his arm, pushing right back around in front of him.

“Wait, Ashton, _wait!_ ” she snapped, breaking his concentration from the lines of symbiology that were drawing in power.  “They’re the good guys, okay?”

She gave the line of men surrounding them an appraising glance, and amended, “Well... _sort of_.”

***

“No data on the...”

The woman with the datapad glanced at Ashton. 

“...on the one with the big angry lizards.”

Gyoro growled deeply.  Ururun hissed.  The latter had already spat frost into an unwitting man’s face.  Between the two of them writhing on his back, the manacles holding Ashton down didn’t do much, other than maybe make him feel depressed.

“ _No_ data?”

“None whatsoever.”

The woman’s supervisor looked... skeptical.

“The other one brings up all of one result.  Classified.”

“Classified?” Chisato echoed.

“I guess we keep ‘em in holding until we hear back from Earth,” the supervisor mused.

Ashton shrank on the bench where he sat.  Chisato puffed up in indignation.

“I’m _classified_?” she scowled, voice raising in volume but dropping in pitch.  “How insulting!”

***

Ashton twisted the strap in his hand this way and that, at first trying to determine how the solid braid had frayed apart so badly.  Then trying to weave it back together.

Chisato watched him, her patience equally frayed.  At length, she grabbed it from his hands, ignoring his startled squeak of protest.

“What is this thing, anyway?” she asked.

“It’s good luck.”

“Really?”  She moved it fluidly from one hand to the next as he tried to grab for it back, looking it over with a discerning eye.  “I don’t know if I’d call getting us thrown in the brig _good luck_.”

Ashton pouted.  Chisato’s expression softened, and she offered it back to him with a soft sigh.  “...whatever.”

He took it back, almost reluctantly, and rubbed his thumb over the inscription.  With a sigh, she pulled out her pocket computer and began tapping away at its screen.

They sat in silence until Chisato snapped the computer closed again.  Her shoulders slumped, and she folded her hands in her lap.

“Sorry if I stepped on your toes earlier.”

“What?”

“You know, with...”  She gestured, vaguely, with the computer, and when being vague didn’t do it, she elaborated.  “I thought you and Noel were shacking up.  The way things went.”

“We are.”  Ashton blinked.  “I mean, we share a...”  A deeper realization crept into his eyes.  “Um.”

Chisato’s mouth quirked at his reaction, and she leaned nearer on one hand to peer up at him.

“You know, you’re cute when you get all flustered.”

That may have only flustered him more.  He blushed deeply, stammering for a proper answer.  Chisato’s smile deepened, and she leaned in to kiss him.

The force screen holding them in shimmered and faded.  Pulling away from Ashton, Chisato let loose a little “Ha!” of victory.

She jumped up, bounding out of the cell.  Ashton was slower to his feet, and stumbled behind her.

“Did... you just...?”

“Yep.”

“No, I mean-...” he stuttered.  There was a hissing sort of laughter over his head.  “You just...”

“Let’s talk about this somewhere else,” Chisato suggested. 

She was already setting her computer to work on the next door, and before Ashton could answer, it slid open.  Chisato gave a shout of surprise, then squared her shoulders.

Noel looked equally surprised.  His gaze flicked over Chisato’s shoulder to Ashton, and back again.

Chisato recovered first.

“It’s about time,” she told Noel, even as he stepped forward to slide an arm around her.  His other arm found Ashton, and a heavy breath left him.  “Where were you?  Where have you been?”

“Are you alright?”  Noel asked.  Chisato squirmed free, giving him a light push.

“We’re _fine_ , other than we’re in the process of a jailbreak here.”

Noel regarded her seriously.  “We need to leave.  Now.”

“Yeah?  No argument here.”

He held Ashton for a moment longer before letting go, and nudged him towards the door and slipping out in the lead.  Chisato gave Ashton a look.

“But you’re _not_ shacking up?” she teased in a hushed whisper.

***

The flight to their shuttle had been tense, but uneventful.  It was only after they’d gotten underway and made lightyears from the station that the edge started to dull.

Ashton’s charm was only a little worse for wear.

“Who was that guy?” he asked.

Chisato perked up.  She’d been half dozing in the navigation station.  “...what guy?”

Noel, pulled from his own thoughts, scowled.  “He spoke to you?”

Ashton gave a half-shrug, half nod.  He picked at the weave of his bracelet.

“What did he say?”

“He said... that you knew each other.”

Chisato glanced between them, eyes narrowing suspiciously.  “Fill me in, here?”

Noel stood from the control seat.  He crossed his arms, then lifted one hand to rub his eyes.  Finally, he sighed deeply.

At length, he asked, “Did you think the Wise Men could escape their prison by their own power?”

Ashton’s attention remained rapt.  Sparing half a look at him, Chisato’s gaze rolled back to Noel as he told the story.

“There were thirteen of us.”  He struggled with it.  Had been, perhaps, for a long time.  “We... thought we were doing the right thing.  If we hadn’t been betrayed...” Shaking his head, Noel cut the little details short.  “The others were exiled from Nede.  I’ve... spent a lot of time thinking things over.  And regretting many of my choices.”

Chisato’s expression grew sour.

“You think maybe you could have told someone about this?” she asked.

“I didn’t even know any had survived their exile.”

Ashton ventured, “You think... maybe we should tell someone now?”

A fleeting, pensive expression crossed Noel’s face, and he shook his head.

“They’re not harmless,” he weighed out loud, “But they’re aimless – they... don’t have anyone to lead them.”

Ashton and Chisato exchanged a brief look of mutual skepticism.  The latter flopped dramatically back in her seat, and Ashton fidgeted.

“Does that mean we can go home now?” he asked.

Noel glanced at Chisato.  “Would that be alright with you?”

“You know me, I can survive anywhere.”

He continued to stare at her, expression taking on a curious bent, and she asked, “... _what_?”

“The others were wrong.  It’s not that we’re not capable of adapting and evolving – we simply... shut ourselves away where there was no longer any need for it.” There was a subtle undercurrent of frustration and anger under his voice.  “...such a foolish waste of life.”

Chisato stretched to reach for one of his hands, then more simply got to her feet to slide her arms around him in a proper hug.

“Let’s not repeat the mistakes of the past.”

She quirked an eyebrow at Ashton.  He bit his lip, and shrugged.

**Author's Note:**

> ...sorry, the plot got away from me here. This was initially a bit of fond reminiscing and reunions, and then along the way I started wondering what the hell Noel was talking about regarding his connections to the Wise Men... which I guess got wrongly translated or something? but also took over my brain.
> 
> I hope that you like it, anyway. :)


End file.
